as a general rule. if what we’re calling ‘cultural appropriation’ sounds like nazi ideology (i.e. ‘white people should only do white people things and black people should only do black people things’) with progressive language, we are performing a very very poor application of what ‘cultural appropriation’ means. this is troublingly popular in the blogosphere right now and i think we all need to be more critical of what it is we may be saying or implying, even unintentionally.
There is nothing wrong with everyone enjoying each other’s cultures so long as those cultures have been shared.
Eating Chinese food, watching Bollywood movies, going to see Cambodian dancers, or learning to speak Korean so you can watch every K drama in existence is totally fine. The invitation to participate in those things came from within those cultures. The Mexican family that owns the place where I get fajitas wants me to eat fajitas. Their whole business model kind of depends on it, actually.
If you see something from another culture you think you might want to participate in, but you don’t know if that would be disrespectful or appropriative, you can just…ask. Like. A Jewish friend explained what a mezuzah was to me, recently. (It’s the little scroll-thing near their front doors that they touch when they come into their house. It basically means “this is a Jewish household.”)
“Oh, cool,” I said. “Can I touch it? Or is it only for Jewish people?”
“You can touch it or you can not touch it,” she said. “I don’t care.”
“Cool, I’m gonna touch it, then.”
“Cool.”
It’s not hard.
You want to twerk, twerk. I’ve never heard a black person say they didn’t think anybody else should be allowed to twerk. Just that they want us to acknowledge that they invented that shit, not Miley fucking Cyrus.
this is a good post.
Thank you, I was trying to sort this out in my head but you explained it very well.
#free exchange of culture is great – taking that culture without invite and pretending yours is an original take#(worse still profiting off it)#is cultural appropriation (by @gnimaerd)
I think it’s also worth noting that if you are borrowing something from another culture, you should defend it for the people who originated it.
Like, I’m white. I’ve lived my whole life in the US. The only other country I’ve ever been to is (non-French) Canada, which is basically “the US with prettier money.” And I love Mexican embroidered dresses.
They’re beautiful. They wash easily. They look adorable on little kids. They’re cool to wear and breathe easily, which is nice when you live in the Sonoran Desert. And if you live close to the border, like I do, you can literally buy them at farmers’ markets and festival booths and like … just about anywhere. There are Mexican artisans who come up here to make a buck because we’ll buy and we can afford higher prices than folks south of the border. We get awesome clothes, they get money, we all win.
But here’s the thing. If, as a white woman, I’m going to wear a dress embroidered in a traditional Mexican style, I owe it to the Mexican women around me to stand up when some racist asshole cracks wise and defend their right–not my right, their right–to wear the clothing traditional to their own culture. I owe it to them because the sad truth is, racists are more likely to listen to me than to someone with a different skin color and an accent. I owe it to them because they’ve allowed me to share something so lovely that doesn’t exist in the culture I come from. And I owe it to them because I wear a Mexican embroidered dress and people think I look “trendy” and “chic” and “classic,” but a Latina woman wears one and she “should go back to Mexico if she hates America so much.”
When you are in a position of privilege, and you get to share in another culture, defend it for the people to whom it actually belongs.
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